If you could extract said ROMs off the Steam or Virtual Console releases that would at least ease your issues with piracy, though some of them may have been edited for licensing or some other issue. I mainly get my ROMs off Emuparadise, but you might want to check their hashes (MD5, SHA1...) to see if they match those from known releases.

And I finally managed to renew those damn certificates on this site as well, after a week of waiting for Let's Encrypt to cool down and let me issue a couple or so more.

There is another sad reminder on why people shouldn't buy a Mac over a PC. MacOS Mojave.

In the official compatibility list, only Mac Mini devices from 2012 onward will be able to run Mojave. My old Mac Mini was a mid-2011. It only took 7 years for Apple to consider my old Mini "obsolete". Mac Mini is always a low end choice for an Apple computer. A mid-2011 Mac Mini could still run Mojave in some form, even if certain new features will have to be disabled.

It just goes to show you that you never know when Apple will dump official support for your device. 7 year old PCs can still run Windows 10 rather well provided that you give it the upgrades it needs.

Of course, there will always be an unofficial way to install Mojave on unsupported Macs. I see posts about it all the time in the Low End Mac FB group. I never really look into such things though, but I'd imagine it can be a bit fiddly to install.

(06-14-2018, 08:40 AM)cpd2009 Wrote: There is another sad reminder on why people shouldn't buy a Mac over a PC. MacOS Mojave.

In the official compatibility list, only Mac Mini devices from 2012 onward will be able to run Mojave. My old Mac Mini was a mid-2011. It only took 7 years for Apple to consider my old Mini "obsolete". Mac Mini is always a low end choice for an Apple computer. A mid-2011 Mac Mini could still run Mojave in some form, even if certain new features will have to be disabled.

It just goes to show you that you never know when Apple will dump official support for your device. 7 year old PCs can still run Windows 10 rather well provided that you give it the upgrades it needs.

Of course, there will always be an unofficial way to install Mojave on unsupported Macs. I see posts about it all the time in the Low End Mac FB group. I never really look into such things though, but I'd imagine it can be a bit fiddly to install.

Planned obsolescence sure is an arse to deal with.

I think the methods used to work around restrictions on Mojave compatibility utilise hacks used to get macOS to run on Hackintoshes, and it isn't that much of a surprise either.

And yes, as you may have noticed, I've just installed a responsive theme here. There's also a basic mobile theme as well accessible via https://www.strawberryforum.org/board/?m...ion=mobile but I am not that bothered to prop up an m.strawberryforum.org redirect yet.

Oscar, my odd unlocked KPhone from 2015, still runs well, but I'm starting to suspect the battery may be starting to wear down. It's not holding a charge as long as it's used to. The battery life hasn't become too short, but we all know that Li-Ion batteries don't last forever. And Oscar's battery is non-replaceable, so once his battery becomes unusable, so does the entire phone.

I'm starting to explore my options, and I would like to stick with unlocked Android phones. I don't know where to look though, in regards to avoiding purchasing a shady phone that could have pre-installed Malware. That rules out nearly every unlocked phone on eBay.

I am aware of a rather popular brand of unlocked phones called BLU, and many of their previous phones have received high marks in reviews. I also know that a few years ago there was a privacy scare with said phones regarding user data being sent to a Chinese server or something. There is also this, which doesn't put BLU in a good light either... https://threatpost.com/down-the-rabbit-h...on/128390/

Failing that, I may just order a bog standard Tracfone unit. As long as the phone has an FM Radio function, I'm fine.

(06-29-2018, 09:11 AM)cpd2009 Wrote: It could possibly be time for a new smartphone for yours truly.

Oscar, my odd unlocked KPhone from 2015, still runs well, but I'm starting to suspect the battery may be starting to wear down. It's not holding a charge as long as it's used to. The battery life hasn't become too short, but we all know that Li-Ion batteries don't last forever. And Oscar's battery is non-replaceable, so once his battery becomes unusable, so does the entire phone.

I'm starting to explore my options, and I would like to stick with unlocked Android phones. I don't know where to look though, in regards to avoiding purchasing a shady phone that could have pre-installed Malware. That rules out nearly every unlocked phone on eBay.

I am aware of a rather popular brand of unlocked phones called BLU, and many of their previous phones have received high marks in reviews. I also know that a few years ago there was a privacy scare with said phones regarding user data being sent to a Chinese server or something. There is also this, which doesn't put BLU in a good light either... https://threatpost.com/down-the-rabbit-h...on/128390/

Failing that, I may just order a bog standard Tracfone unit. As long as the phone has an FM Radio function, I'm fine.

If you could stretch your budget a bit more, I'd vouch the LG K6 to you. That or some other model from an established phone brand like a midrange Motorola.

For now, I will reset Oscar to factory defaults. Honestly, he does need that since it's been over 2 years since the last reset. It may not improve battery life, but perhaps I'm just using the phone more often than I realize.

I finally was able to schedule cable TV installation tonight. It won't be until Thursday afternoon after my work, but at least I will have live TV again. Streaming is nice, but I'm still a bit old fashioned and need my live TV companion as well. If the TV signals were stronger in my part of town, I would have just got rabbit ears for my TV. Too bad digital TV has an "all or nothing" approach to signal quality. Signal gets too far weak? Then no TV for you!

Makes me miss the old days of analog TV where even a fuzzy picture was still acceptable viewing.

(07-02-2018, 07:35 AM)cpd2009 Wrote: For now, I will reset Oscar to factory defaults. Honestly, he does need that since it's been over 2 years since the last reset. It may not improve battery life, but perhaps I'm just using the phone more often than I realize.

I finally was able to schedule cable TV installation tonight. It won't be until Thursday afternoon after my work, but at least I will have live TV again. Streaming is nice, but I'm still a bit old fashioned and need my live TV companion as well. If the TV signals were stronger in my part of town, I would have just got rabbit ears for my TV. Too bad digital TV has an "all or nothing" approach to signal quality. Signal gets too far weak? Then no TV for you!

Makes me miss the old days of analog TV where even a fuzzy picture was still acceptable viewing.

If only that replaceable batteries were still a thing with midrange to top-end handsets...

And yes, that's my biggest beef with DTV these days. If the signal is less-than-stellar, you're SOL and the feed would outright refuse to show up or just show a mangled MPEG stream.

(07-02-2018, 07:35 AM)cpd2009 Wrote: For now, I will reset Oscar to factory defaults. Honestly, he does need that since it's been over 2 years since the last reset. It may not improve battery life, but perhaps I'm just using the phone more often than I realize.

I finally was able to schedule cable TV installation tonight. It won't be until Thursday afternoon after my work, but at least I will have live TV again. Streaming is nice, but I'm still a bit old fashioned and need my live TV companion as well. If the TV signals were stronger in my part of town, I would have just got rabbit ears for my TV. Too bad digital TV has an "all or nothing" approach to signal quality. Signal gets too far weak? Then no TV for you!

Makes me miss the old days of analog TV where even a fuzzy picture was still acceptable viewing.

If only that replaceable batteries were still a thing with midrange to top-end handsets...

And yes, that's my biggest beef with DTV these days. If the signal is less-than-stellar, you're SOL and the feed would outright refuse to show up or just show a mangled MPEG stream.

The thing with the unreplaceable batteries in high end phones is Planned Obsolescence all the same. The finite life of the battery just forces you to replace your phone sooner than you should. And I believe we have Apple to thank for that mindset.

Cheaper phones tend to have replaceable batteries, funnily enough. Trade-off is the obvious decrease in CPU performance and, for off brand China-phones, crappy low capacity batteries. I recall Ashens' reviews of those early knockoff iPhone devices that came with two batteries to make up for the low capacity of using just one.